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DA: Woman shot nine times was killed in self-defense

District Attorney Pete Hautzinger said Thursday that he will not file criminal charges in the November shooting death of a Pear Park woman, saying she was shot nine times in self-defense.

Crystal Nash, 42, was killed around 2:20 a.m. on Nov. 1 in the driveway at 3007 Rood Ave., after what Hautzinger on Thursday described as an alcohol-fueled confrontation between Nash and a neighbor. A man in his 20s, who has not been identified by authorities, also was wounded.

“In declining to file criminal charges here, I do not intend to condone or endorse anything that happened,” Hautzinger wrote in a letter sent Thursday to Mesa County Sheriff Stan Hilkey. “I certainly believe that neighborhood disputes are usually better resolved without firearms being involved.”

According to Hautzinger’s letter, Nash, who was host of a party running into the predawn hours of Nov. 1 at her home at 438 Colorow Drive, walked to a neighbor’s home, upset and believing the neighbor had called deputies to her home earlier in the evening.

Deputies responded to 438 Colorow Drive for what initially was reported as a possible domestic violence incident, but they left the area after concluding there was no crime.

Nash, whose blood-alcohol level was .184 percent, was armed with a Ruger handgun when she walked to her neighbor’s home, Hautzinger wrote. Nash pounded on the neighbor’s door, while the homeowner grabbed his semiautomatic .22-caliber handgun and hid it behind his back.

“He asked her if she had a gun, and she told him that she did and that she was going to use it,” Hautzinger’s letter says.

The man kept his gun hidden behind his back and told her to put her gun down.

“Ms. Nash responded with another obscenity and brought her gun up across her body toward” the neighbor, Hautzinger wrote. The man then shot Nash, emptying all nine rounds in the clip of his handgun. Nash was hit nine times.

The neighbor told Sheriff’s Department investigators he thought he was going to die when Nash raised her gun.

“In order to file any charges against (homeowner) I would need to be convinced I could prove he had no reasonable belief that he was in imminent danger of being killed or of suffering great bodily injury,” reads Hautzinger’s letter. That conclusion, he said, would be “impossible” to reach.

State law on self-defense says persons defending themselves may, among other things, “use a degree of force which he reasonably believes to be necessary for that purpose.”